


It takes a village

by Cuits



Category: Bridget Jones's Diary - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Happy Ending, M/M, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 13:42:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8104570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cuits/pseuds/Cuits
Summary: Family is a complex concept and relationships are difficult. Bridget knows this better than most.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to always lovely Dasku

**BRIDGET**

For the first two, six, ten days Bridget is sore and exhausted, and not even in a remotely cute way. She feels drained to the point of almost oblivion, spending almost every single minute she is out of bed in a mostly semi-conscious state where she barely manages to drag herself from one room to the next without toppling over.

Her lovely apartment has become a battle camp. It is full of diapers and tiny dirty clothes that smell like sour milk and the cries of the baby seem to resonate infinitely as the two sleep deprived — responsible — adults try their best not to accidentally kill the tiny human being while crashing into the million baby things that seem to cramp de house.

And don’t even get her started on the logistics of taking a decent shower or peeing with that whole mess going down in between her legs. It’s like her whole body and mind is protesting the situation through her vagina.

Then, on the eleventh day the alarm clock sounds way too early and she gets up having slept barely enough to avoid brain death. She has to shower, dress, feed the baby, clean herself and make it out of the house in time for her doctor appointment without drinking even a single drop of any liquid with caffeine in it. Stupid breastfeeding.

Just by thinking of it tears start welling in her eyes.

Mark is asleep on the couch, which is way too small for him. Both his feet are planted on the ground and his neck seems about to break on the armrest as a protective hand holds the sleeping baby on top of his chest. If she weren’t exhausted past the point of feeling any kind of human emotion and her reproductive system weren't under construction, she would probably be melting just about now.

When the knock startles her and brings her back to the land of the — more or less — living she hurriedly goes to the door and opens it before even thinking about tidying herself up or maybe checking the peephole for perverts or vacuum cleaner salesmen.

“If you wake the baby I will murder you with my bare hands,” she whispers as soon as she opens the door and almost a second before registering that the blond thing in her peripheral vision is her completely messed up hair and that she is wearing a very dirty pajamas at the moment, big, wet circles on her chest and milk stains everywhere. The whole package.

On the threshold Jack smiles sweetly and she wants to kill him.

Perfectly dressed and rested, with a nice, untired face and a cup of fucking coffee in his hand. She really wants to kill him and steal his caffeine.

“Do I come at a bad time? I didn’t want to intrude, give you both your space. That kind of thing.”

She can hear the doubt in his voice as he climbs the stairs behind her, she can see the terror in his eyes when he stands in the middle of the living room and takes a look around.

“I don’t need space, what I need is a shower, a twenty four hour power nap and a time travel machine.”

Jack pulls a chair and clears it of _stuff_ before sitting on it near to the couch where Mark and the baby are still asleep.

“So, rough day?” he asks in a very low voice.

She doesn’t even dignify the stupid question with an answer. She rolls her eyes and takes a quick shower before heading to the doctor’s appointment, which is, weirdly as it might sound, the highlight of her week.

In a clean, nice-smelling, peaceful examination table, Dr. Rawlings takes a look at her nether regions and with a satisfied chuckle announces that everything is alright.

“Are you sure? Cause the last time I took a peek down there it looked like the chainsaw killing gone wrong.”

She takes the latex gloves off and makes a noncommittal gesture. “It looks exactly as it should at this point. Give it some time to properly heal and it will end up looking marginally close to how it looked before the baby.”

Bridget nods in consolation not knowing exactly how she feels about her changing vagina — they've been acquainted with each other for quite some time. She takes a deep breath, then another one and then proceeds to start to cry for no apparent good reason that could or could not have to do with her private parts.

Dr. Rawlings don’t seem startled at all.

“I’m so sorry,” Bridget says still crying, “it’s just that I am so tired. And I am a terrible mother.”

Terrible, half the time she is just glad that she can pass the baby to Mark and stay away from him for a while.

“Oh darling, don’t get fooled by nappies’ spots. All new mothers are exhausted and most of them are really terrible mothers. It’s important to set low expectations for kids early in life,“ she sighs. “It’s how we survive as a species.”

“But, but—” Bridget was aiming for a more inspiring advice, something that would convince her that the worst part was already over and done with, perhaps. “Things get better right?”

“Well you’ll catch some sleep and be able to drink caffeine and alcohol again. That surely helps.”

She must look as unconvinced as she feels although the alcohol part is surely something to look forward to. She’d kill for a drink and a drag right now.

“If you feel overwhelmed, there is no shame in asking for help, Bridget.”

“But you said I could do it alone,” she accuses the good doctor. If she can’t trust this woman, who holds the future of her battered crotch in her hands she is probably going to have a serious break down.

Dr. Rawlings offers her a tissue box with practiced expertise and takes her hand in a reassuring but still professional way.

“I actually meant hiring professional help and I’m still sure you could do all of this alone but you have a choice not to, do you want to do it all by your own?”

Bridget shakes her head no. Dr Rawlings is right, she has the choice which is somehow both important and inconsequential, but she is not alone, she doesn’t have to be alone and she doesn’t want to do the baby thing alone. She calms herself enough to thank the other woman and set the date for the next appointment like any other functional human being would and heads back to her apartment with her shoulders a little less metaphorically heavy.

When she opens the door she hears the baby’s protests and some kind of hushed argument. She climbs up the stairs to find Jack and Mark sitting shirtless on the sofa as they apparently discuss the better way to hold baby William to calm him down and something to do with energies or feng shui.

The both stop when they see her standing there looking at them.

“I see you two have it all under control so I’m going to take a nap.”

She closes the bedroom door behind her and doesn’t even bother to undress. She is asleep as soon as her head touches the pillow.

 

**JACK**

It takes three whole months for him to realize that his winning algorithm is far too simple and confined to compute all of the important variables. For example, he never wanted to form a family and he still doesn’t really want to, but somehow he always ends up gravitating towards a far too small apartment near Borough Market anyway.

This situation is as follows: he likes Mark and he likes Bridget — probably more than it’s convenient for him — but he is completely in love with baby William and the fact that he might or might not be his biological father doesn’t seem such an important thing after all.

The inconspicuous white envelope with the DNA results lies untouched somewhere on one of the shelves accumulating dust and none of them seem to be in a hurry to open it; and so they all live in a kind of Schrodinger's cat situation in which both Mark and he are simultaneously the baby’s father and not the baby’s father. It feels inconsequential when little William demands to be fed, changed, bathed, cared for and loved, and if in this whole process he often finds himself sharing domestic bliss — so to speak — with another man, well that is also something that his algorithm failed to take into account.

And don’t even get him started on the amount of time they both spend shirtless due to skin-to-skin baby holding — as many studies recommend — and regurgitated milk.

The situation is also as follows: as much as he loves the baby, he also loves his job. He loves to travel around the world, meet new people and bed beautiful women. That doesn’t change the fact that as of recent, when he thinks of going back home he thinks of that stupidly crowded apartment in central London.

Strangely, he seems to fit in there in the same way the whole situation seems to fit in his life.

It is a mathematical logic disaster.

“How is Brid’s new job?” he asks because although he has been two weeks away promoting his new app through Asia and just landed in London a few hours ago he is up to date with the big news.

Beside him Mark smiles and his whole face seems to light up. “She loves it.”

It’s the hottest summer London can remember and they both lie in Bridget and Mark’s bed over the rumpled sheets as William sleeps in his crib. It’s not like it’s something weird, there is only one bed in the apartment after all.

“I would have thought that going back to work would have been harder for her.”

“Bridget has always been quite resilient,” Mark says with a dreamy look in his eyes. Jack doesn’t think he even realizes how much his expression softens when he talks about Bridget. It’s ridiculous and endearing and somehow it adds to the already complex equation.

“And how is your new job Mark?”

He has no idea about law but he guesses the transition from international human rights advocate to family law barrister can’t have been an easy one

“Well, there are no empowering vagina’s chants, that’s for sure,” he says with a mix of longing and tension that makes Jack cringe a little. It is clear in his voice that he absolutely hates it and Jack looks around the room for a lack of an adequate combination of words to comfort him.

His life surely wasn’t supposed to look like this and his math doesn’t really know what to make of it.

It is almost noon and light comes bright through the windows. They both should be sleeping since he is terribly jetlagged and Mark has been taking care of the baby’s nocturnal tantrums for the last five nights to ease Bridget’s return to work, but they both seem to be just too tired to be able to sleep.

Mark half-sighs half-groans in frustration and Jack kneels on the bed with determination before fully thinking about it. ”Come on, I’ll help you relax,” he says to Mark and the other man just looks at him a little perplexed for a few moments, contemplating perhaps if the suggestions goes against some kind of unwritten limit.

“What?”

“Turn around, I used to do this for Bridget all the time when she was pregnant and too stressed out,” he explains implying that this is nothing out of the ordinary, which frankly, it kind of isn't since he has offered massages to many other people in many different circumstances.

Mark looks at him with his serious eyes for almost a minute before turning around without any comment. Jack has come to find that Mark always seems ultimately british with all his dignified and repressed demeanour but once you get know him better he is warm and relaxed, even funny in an unexpected way that Bridget seems to be able to bring up constantly.

He puts his hands over Mark’s naked back and he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t tense up, in fact it only takes a couple of strokes to get him to start to relax his muscles.

He wonders what kind of independent variant he could apply to that.

Baby William keeps sleeping as Mark's breathing becomes gradually more deep, only groaning occasionally as Jack hits a particularly tense spot. The sound of a key opening the door echoes around the apartment and a minute later Bridget appears at the threshold of the master bedroom.

Mark smiles a dopey smile and half rises a hand to greet her. His hands are still working on Mark’s back as Bridget says a general “Hi,” in a low voice and takes out her shoes and mostly ignores them as she looks for some space in her cramped wardrobe to hang her coat. Jack really doesn’t know how to proceed, he is supposed to be trying to catch some sleep and maybe he should get out of the bed, kiss Bridget on the cheek and go to the sofa but instead, he resumes his previous position on the bed, lying face up on rumpled sheets and closes his eyes.

A moment later he can hear Bridget kissing Mark and the mattress shifting as she gets on the bed next to Mark and Mark turns and scoots over to make room for her which means lying partially on top of his right shoulder.

“We need a bigger bed,” says Bridget and Jack opens his eyes and tries very hard not to take for granted any kind of implication.

“We need a bigger house,” Mark says with a sigh as he caresses her blonde hair.

Jack decides to take a leap of faith. “We definitely need air conditioning.”

Nobody corrects him on the pronoun he has used and he realizes in that moment that he could very easily fall in love with this, with them, with this family he has managed to stumble into and that is somehow his family too.

He needs to start working in a new, far more complex algorithm right away.

 

**MARK**

Their new flat is not far from where Bridget’s apartment used to be so he walks through Borough Market and buys a little bouquet of white daisies after work before heading towards Southwark. He used to do this all the time the last time he was involved with Bridget, every time he missed a date or arrived terrible late to an appointment due to his work. Now he is never late. Family law, as boring and frustrating as it is, is also pretty predictable and easy to schedule.

He takes the stairs instead of the tiny elevator of the building and enters home to find Jack and Bridget seated at the kitchen table of the recently reformed three bedroom flat, which aside of William being quiet and asleep, is a common enough occurrence.

He smiles tiredly.

It takes him a few seconds more to remember that Jack wasn’t supposed to come back from the States until Thursday; the timing suits him right though, he has his hands full this week with a new annoying client and having an extra pair of hands taking care of William is very convenient.

Mark takes a couple more of steps, kisses Bridget on the cheek and puts a hand on Jack’s shoulder in a silent greeting before leaving his briefcase on the counter in order to take care of the daisies. He has found an unused crystal vase and is filling it with water when the continued silence makes him curious and he looks over his shoulder to find Jack and Bridget’s straight, worried faces. His stomach suddenly drops.

He puts the flowers in the vase and turns around in a very calm, very determined way.

“Is everything okay? is William okay?”

“Yes,” says Jack reassuringly. “Sit down with us.”

“We just need to talk,” blurts Bridget, and it is a sentence that sounds far less reassuring coming from her lips.

He drags a chair and sits. The smile is gone from his face and he makes fists of his hands over the table, emotionally closing off, preparing himself for the battle to will probably follow. A talk like this means unavoidable change and he is not very fond of changes; historically they had been definitely not great for him.

Bridget takes a deep breath as she looks consistently to the table and Jack takes her hand in one of his and then reaches across and takes Mark’s in his other hand.

“You are not happy, Mark,” she says, and whichever bad news he was imagining didn’t resemble this. Not even remotely.

“What?” A thousand scenarios in which he ends up alone and discarded under pouring rain at the side of a deserted road were already piling up in his mind.

Jack tightens his hold on his hand and he instinctively tightens it back while he watches closely Bridget’s familiar and expressive features.

“You hate your job,” she elaborates. Mark releases the air in his lungs like he had been holding his breath for a year straight.

“I don’t _hate_ it.”

“You absolutely hate it,” intercedes Jack.

Hate is maybe a too harsh word. He just finds it terribly unrewarding which could hardly be considered the same.

“You have to go back to human rights law,” continues Jack. Bridget finally looks back at him with a calm smile like this it’s the unavoidable end to all their shared history.

He feels an acute pain in his chest and he squares his jaw to contain it.

“Mark, listen to me,” she says and reaches for his other hand, caressing the back of it with her soft, delicate fingers. “We can’t be people we are not. That is what failed between us before, all those years ago. We shouldn’t try to change each other and you are not happy with family law.”

He swallows the lump in his throat. It sounds all too definitive. “But—”

“I have a job that I love and you should too, and if that means you can’t be home every night of the week, then so be it.”

Mark is at a loss. His job is exactly why they broke up last time. “You said that you felt like I wasn’t there. That you felt lonely. That I left you alone.”

“I’m stronger now. And I am a mom now. I’ll never feel lonely again.”

Mark tries to methodically, make sense of the situation.

“I can also help,” says Jack in a conciliatory tone.

“But—”

“We are not going anywhere without you,” Bridget interrupts once again, firmly, running through his armour as if was made of paper and easily appeasing his fears.

Mark takes a deep breath, the pain in his chest dissolving into thin air as he dares to imagine working again in something he cares deeply about without hurting Bridget in the process, without neglecting baby William because of it.

The mere thought that he could have it all: his work and Bridget and this family, makes him smile unrestrainedly. Bridget smiles too. Jack keeps on smiling. It feels like a Hallmark-movie kind of moment.

This could work. This could actually work. This trapezoidal family of theirs.

There is an unopened envelope kept inside a drawer that the three of them have decided not to open until William is old enough to make his own decision or in case of a medical emergency that requires it. He takes a sideways look at Jack, with his own independent life somehow ingrained in his and thinks that maybe this is why his past attempts at forming a true home failed before: he was lacking numbers, he should have searched for the adequate people instead of concentrating on the limits that occidental culture demands of a family unit. Mark has travelled the world enough to know that there are all kinds of family structures that work, he has fought hard for their right to exist and be respected.

He had been dramatically shortsighted.

“All right,” he says with an improper chuckle.

They are all joined by their hands over the table. It feels like a pact.

It feels like a promise.

**BRIDGET**

The worst thing about her new job as a producer of a morning news show isn’t the ungodly early hours or even the very bad coffee of the vending machines. The worst part is not being able to listen to Miranda’s outrageous comments through the coms. She wishes with all her heart that she could work with her again, but as she gets into a tiny closet to attend her fifteenth phone call in a very short period of time, Bridget finds it difficult to actually miss her.

“Are you sure you are still on for the weekend?” Miranda blurts out as way of saying hi, exactly as he has done for, at least, the last twelve phone calls.

Bridget rolls her eyes and tries to find the light switch and not to feel terribly offended by the implication that she would stand her up.

“Yes, Miranda.” She is so ready for the weekend get away that she is going to have to be careful not to leave a hole in the door with her silhouette as soon as the work day is over. “I am as ready as I was yesterday and the day before.”

She has finally stopped breastfeeding and has the green light to drink again. Alcohol consumption and forty eight hours straight of not changing diapers sounds like heaven to her.

“Okay, okay. I was just checking that you weren’t being detained by baby duties.”

Bridget makes a noncommittal gesture despite the fact that they are talking on the phone and manages to knock two brooms and a mop in the process. She had become so used to talking to her through the mics that she almost always forget that they are no longer in the line of vision of each other.

“Jack is in town so he and Mark are going to take care of everything.”

She compares briefly her life to the ones of her friends and wonders how they even make it, how can they even be happy when they have virtually no time for themselves and plans are indefinitely on hold for them, always depending on their kids’ schedule. The three of them thought, they manage quite nicely: Jack still travels a lot but has somehow set base in London, Mark travels less than he used to but still gets to do what he loves and she is the one who is always in London but she gets to go out with her friends and plan weekend getaways.

The days when she would wallow in her own self-pity, drinking and blasting sad song after sad song feel oddly remote.

“Yes well, about that —” The pause is not long enough to be called dramatic, not even by Miranda standards. “— how does that work, exactly?”

This is not the first time someone has asked this very same question and Bridget is still trying to find the perfect combination of cute and unrevealing for her answer. Miranda is arguably her best friend thought, she loves Miranda deeply and so she sighs and simply tells her the truth.

“I don’t know, it just works. It makes things easier, I guess.” And because Mark said it once and it stuck with her she adds, “it takes a village to raise a child.”

Miranda snorts. “Yes, well, your village is unusually populated by very attractive men.”

She most certainly can’t deny that. “It is a good village.”

“I’m going to tell you what it is: completely unfair. You sleep around once and you end up with a gorgeous millionaire and the handsomest human right barrister of the kingdom. I sleep around all the time and I only end up with STD scare alerts,” she says. “It’s almost like a morality tale.”

Bridget laughs trying to reconcile the concept of Miranda with any sort of moral of any kind.

“The moral that you should keep trying?”

“Of course, which other could it be?”

They both laugh it off and the tone of the conversation changes suddenly.

The broom closet smells like rat poison.

“But you are happy, right?” her friend asks in her this-is-serious-business voice, “You are not just going along with the situation?”

The concern in her voice is endearing and she is going to invite her to an extra shot of expensive tequila just for that.

“I am happy, Miranda.”

She is. Her boy is growing beautifully, she loves her work and she can drink again. She has finally figured how to make things work with the love of her live and her mother is in an unparalleled unobtrusive phase.

Then there is Jack, she loves Jack, she just doesn’t love him like she loves Mark but well, she doesn’t love anybody like she loves Mark.

Come to think of it, she doesn’t love anybody like she loves anybody else. Miranda, Jack, her mother, her father, Mark, Jude, Shazzer, Tom, William. She loves every and each of them in a particular, personalized way.

Love shouldn’t be confined or defined by the limits of a particular cultural view” has said Mark in one of his closing arguments, because he is not only incredibly handsome but so very clever as well.

“Yes. I am truly happy,” she declares truthfully.

It’s getting late and she has a show to produce before she can go on her very anticipated weekend so she promptly ends the conversation with her friend and comes out of the closet.

 

**JACK**

It happens in Amberes of all places.

He is there promoting the newly released French version of his book and Mark has an International Human Right Simposium. It is just a coincidence but known enough in advance that they start to make plans to coordinate their schedules and their accommodations two months before just to end up booking a suite in a hotel convenient for both of them because it feels plainly ridiculous not to share a room when they already share a family.

They have dinner and a couple of drinks at the hotel restaurant where some guy is playing jazz. Unlike Mark, Jack doesn’t like jazz but he enjoys the 20 years old whisky in the relaxed atmosphere. When they finally decide that is time to go up to their room Marks smiles sheepishly and says, “I want to show you something.”

He goes to his briefcase and very ceremoniously procures a little, black, velvet case and presents it in front of him before opening it. Inside, there is a beautiful white gold ring with a black-green pearl and a couple of zircons arranged in way that the result is elegant and unconventional at the same time.

“Oh Mark, you shouldn't have bothered.”

Mark chuckles but he looks excited and nervous almost like the night William was born. It makes Jack laughs softly at his own joke.

“What do you think?”

He thinks that the piece of jewelry is most certainly an engagement ring.

“I think Bridget is going to love it.”

Mark closes the case and puts it inside the front pocket of his trousers and sighs deeply looking at the carpet for a moment too long. “I’m gonna ask her to marry me,” he says death serious.

Jack takes a deep breath and smiles broadly, laughing as he takes a step forward, incredibly happy with the news, more than he would have thought. He puts his arms around Mark’s shoulders and embraces him with strength.

“Congratulations, man,” he says rocking a little from one side to the other in their embrace. “Just don’t try the surprise thing of putting it in a glass of champagne for her to find it. She will surely drink it.”

Mark embraces him back and pats him affectionately. “I’m glad you are happy,” Mark says suddenly more relaxed but still a little cautious, as if there was any chance that Jack wouldn’t be delighted for these people that he loves.

Jack takes half a step back and looks at Mark in the eyes with his hands holding his head. “Of course, of course I am happy for the both of you.” And he can see a thin layer of worry lifting form Mark’s eyes.

He could blame it on the drinks or the excitement but what really brings him to move forward is the implied care that Mark puts on his feelings.

It moves him in a way few things do.

Jack kisses him, almost chastely, barely a touch of lips on lips as stretches to reach because Mark is stupidly tall. They remain like this for a couple of seconds before Mark sighs and almost by pure reflex Jack bites his lower lip lightly.

There is no coming back from there. Their suit jackets are quickly discarded as they continue to kiss and hold each other and Jack’s mind can’t get over the fact that he feels and smells exactly like home and he has been touring for so long that home feels just too enticing.

Mark puts his hands on his jaw redirecting the kiss, angling their mouths with exquisite care and Jack would be almost ashamed to admit that he has never been kissed like this because under the cool exterior of a british gentleman Mark Darcy surely kisses like a nymphomaniac on death row.

Jack pulls at Mark’s clothes, his body is on automatic pilot as his mind goes blissfully blank.

He is going to have to add some more variables to his already impossible equation.

 

**MARK**

He arrives home late at night. He leaves his briefcase on the dining room table as he usually does and goes to William’s room to kiss him on the forehead. He smells like milk, powder and baby and it is a smell that has the power of make him feel unmeasurable tenderness and the courage of a hundred ancient armies.

The passing cars on the street light up the flat occasionally making it unnecessary to turn on any light.

Mark walks to the master bedroom and stays on the threshold contemplating the burrow of sheets and blankets under which Bridget lies asleep. The velvet case burns the skin of his hand as he puts it in the first drawer of his bedside table, then he takes off his shoes and his clothes until he is just in his briefs before getting under the sheets of their bed.

Bridget groans and acknowledges his presence by scooting over until their bodies make contact, the warmth of her bare legs entangling with his. Mark lifts his hand, caresses the mess that is her hair and kisses the tip of her nose.

“Bridget,” he murmurs, “we have to talk.”

She groans some more but doesn’t open her eyes. “Now?”

“Yes. Something happened in my trip,” he explains in whispers and her eyes are suddenly open if a little unfocused.

“What kind of something?” she asks, the worry and the tension obvious in her murmurs and Mark has the feeling of being at the edge of a cliff and about to jump. He is going to end up almost dead, mortally wounded and forever battered but he doesn’t have the option of not telling her. That is not who he is.

That is not who they are.

“Something with Jack.”

He tries to grasp for the words that would make the situation clearer without having to actually be crude enough to spell it out and comes up with nothing. “The kind of something that happens in hotel rooms at business trips according to every cliché.”

“Oh.” Bridget’s eyes are wide and awake and she turns to stare at the ceiling putting some distance between them. “Oh.”

He is not sure if she would welcome his touch but he tries nevertheless and roams his hands carefully along the expanse of skin her tank top reveals.

“Does it change anything?” she says at last after a couple of minutes that feel like days. She turns again to look back at him and the blue of her eyes seems deeper than ever before. He doesn’t see the rage or pain that he expected to discover in her gaze but pure, unaffected worry.

“What do you mean?”

“Does it—” she struggles, the emotion obvious in her voice. “Does it change how you feel about me?”

He wouldn’t want to laugh at a time like this but he can’t help the chuckle as he holds her face so that she can continue to look into his eyes undistracted.

“I’ve loved you for the most part of my adult life. I’ve loved you and missed you since I care to remember, even — and I’m not proud of it — when I was married to another woman.” His own voice falters in the quiet darkness of the room. “Even if we couldn’t make it work this time either, I will still love you. It is deeply ingrained in who I am. So no, it doesn’t change how I feel about you in the slightest.”

Bridget smiles, her kind eyes welling up with unshed tears as she reaches for his face.

“Mark Darcy, for a man that doesn’t know how to talk about feelings you come up with the most beautifully romantic declarations.” She kisses him, tender and sweet and Mark feels like he has left the ground somewhere along the way and gained wings.

“Would it change how you feel about me?” he asks in a display of courage he doesn’t really feel. “When… if... you and Jack—” he is helpless, absolutely helpless. “Would it change how you feel about me?”

She smiles and kisses him again lightly on the lips and on his left cheek as she moves to embrace him completely. “Not in a million years,” she says near his ear in a whisper. “I’ll love you till I’m gray and old and I don’t know what my name is anymore.”

He searches for her mouth and kisses her, pours the whole substance of his being in that very kiss, as slow and deep as possible as he caresses the skin of her neck.

“We should put it on paper,” she says when she breaks the kiss suddenly excited.

“What?”

Bridget smiles deviously “Mark Darcy, will you do me the honour of becoming my husband?”

He thinks about the ring in the drawer and their baby in the next room and the warmest feeling spreads within him.

“Nothing would make me happier,” he says as he insinuates his knee between hers with more intent and leans to kiss her thoroughly as his hand finds the way under the hem of her top.

 

**EPILOGUE**

She walks down the aisle holding her breath. The church is beautiful, her dress is perfect and the day is sunny and warm as nobody could have ever predicted, yet she is absolutely sure that she will trip and fall tearing the delicate skirt in the process.

At the altar, Jack holds William steady in his arms as Mark waits for her. They both smile at her and at each other in acknowledgement while she keeps on walking on the arm of her father.

She is barely aware of her surroundings, her attention focused on Mark: on the little movement of his hands that gives up that he is nervous too, on the shining brightness in his eyes and on his black groom clothes that make him look even more attractive in a way that makes her knees wobble and her heart stop, making the risk of a fall all the more possible.

She looks around briefly trying to compose herself and sees the smiling faces of family and friends that have come to share her happiness and feels profoundly grateful for her good fortune.

The red carpet of the aisle comes to an end and her father releases her arm. She feels vertigo for a moment and looks upfront again as Mark takes her hand. She can feel Jack warm gaze on her. She can hear her boy’s sweet whispers.

She realizes then, that it doesn’t matter is she trips and falls, not when she has people that will always be there to help her to get back on her feet _._


End file.
